U.S. sex trafficking victims are mostly American kids

Human-trafficking cases filed in San Diego federal court have jumped more than 600 percent in the past five years as the victimization of children and adults for sex or labor has gained a bigger spotlight, law-enforcement officials said Friday at a regional conference on the topic.

One of those cases began when a San Diego teenager found a job as a bookkeeper for a small, home-based business. The position quickly turned into a nine-month nightmare of beatings and sexual slavery. Within weeks, the employer revealed himself as a pimp, beat the teen and set a $1,200 daily quota for her prostitution. The victim was 17 at the time.

On Friday, she shared her story at the American Bar Association’s daylong conference at the University of San Diego. The pimp was arrested as part of a law-enforcement investigation, and he is serving 30 years in prison.

The survivor, now 20, asked not to be named for this story. But she decided to speak at the event because “how else are people going to know what is happening here in our community?” More than 175 attorneys, advocates, educators and doctors attended her session and others.

U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said the huge increase in federal prosecutions — from a couple five years ago to dozens now — is expected to rise further as special units in her office, local and federal law-enforcement agencies, nongovernmental groups and educators focus on trafficking.

Nationally, the Department of Justice has seen its number of trafficking cases increase 30 percent in the past three years, she said.

Paralleling the growth in enforcement has been the rising amount of money spent on creating public awareness of the crime and helping victims. The combined efforts are aimed at curtailing what has become the second-most lucrative criminal endeavor in the world.

Friday’s conference, the first of its kind in San Diego County, is evidence of the greater attention paid to the issue in the past year. Grassroots campaigns against human trafficking received a significant boost with President Barack Obama’s speech in September and his executive order requiring stricter hiring guidelines, increased training and other efforts.

Experts said there is actually more labor trafficking in the United States than sex trafficking, but that it is harder to prosecute because victims are mostly migrant men who are reluctant to report the abuse. Sex-trafficking victims, usually thought to be foreign, are predominantly U.S. girls.

“Human trafficking is not isolated to third world countries. It’s prevalent all across the globe, it’s prevalent in our own borders,” Duffy said. “All ages and all ethnicities are being victimized.”

Americans make up 72 percent of human-trafficking victims, according to a report released last year by California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Duffy said the victims have gotten younger in recent years; the typical age of a new victim is now 12 to 14.

The affected children are not all runaways or kids from broken homes. Gangs have moved into the trafficking business because they see the selling of girls as a recyclable, highly lucrative and low-risk product.

Teenagers — mostly girls — are recruited by classmates, pimps and boyfriends who may be gang members with promises of love, glamour and money. Once in the grip of a gang, the victims are often branded, beaten and humiliated to maintain control over them, as prosecutors revealed last year in the take-down of an Oceanside gang prostitution ring that landed dozens of men in jail.

Human trafficking also has changed with the use of technology to recruit and advertise, said Travis Le Blanc, special assistant attorney general of California.

Traffickers seek vulnerable girls and boys by trolling the Internet, especially Facebook, looking for kids who appear bored, sad, lonely or neglected. They cruise malls during school hours to chat up youngsters who did not go to class and lurk around homes for foster children, centers for at-risk children and classrooms with special-needs students.

“It’s all lifestyles, we’ve seen it in all facets,” said George Crysler, a deputy sheriff who is part of the North County Human Trafficking Task Force.

Foster children are most at risk but it can happen to anyone, said Sharon Cooper, an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Medical School.

“Traffickers are very, very wily in the way they locate victims,” said Cooper, who was a speaker at the conference.

Parents and other guardians often do not know what is going on until it is too late. Their teen has become isolated and angry, has skipped school, has been staying away all night and has possibly threatened to run away, Cooper said. She encouraged parents to call the National Missing and Exploited Children’s hotline if their child runs away.

Because sex trafficking often involves minors, educators are critical partners for law enforcement, social-service organizations and nonprofit groups working on trafficking issues, said Jeneé Littrell, vice principal at Chaparral High School in the Grossmont Union High School District. In the education field, she is a pioneer in addressing commercial sex exploitation of children and is developing a guide for the U.S. Department of Education that can be rolled out to school districts nationwide.

“I can’t think of a school district in San Diego that has not been touched by this, including some of the private and elite schools,” she said. “Schools have to be ahead of the curve.”

Littrell said Grossmont Union has been proactive on the issue and has tracked numerous student victims — who have experienced anything from one coerced sexual interaction to ongoing trafficking — and worked to “wrap them” in support services. The district has created an infrastructure that includes a partnership with local law enforcement, social-service agencies and nongovernmental groups.

The district also works to prevent or detect the grooming or luring of teens for sex trafficking by giving training on the issue to all of its employees, Littrell said.